Trash

[anivair.livejournal.com]

Dear users,

DO not store things you want in your trash. That's why it's called TRASH. it's not just some folder where you can keep things you don't want to see anymore If you want to store old stuff, make a folder for it, stupid. Trash is for Trash.

Joe

Comments

[doctoreon.livejournal.com]

Holy shit, I got yelled at about that not too long ago. The user actually called my Director to complain that I emptied his trash.

[ursulagoddess.livejournal.com]

I've ended up explaining that is like the trash bin by your desk, if you throw something away in the morning, its probably going to be there after lunch but if you've gone home and then maintenance has come by and cleaned it up, its gone.

At least its good job security for us helldesk grunts, right!?

[doctoreon.livejournal.com]

There will always be stupid people, thus we will always have a job.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

They're just so dumb. I said, "this is like complaining that you stored your valuables in your trash and then they somehow vanished ... if you want to keep old crap make yourself a folder called 'old crap'".

[snoopyh42.livejournal.com]

Amen, brudda.

[fuego.livejournal.com]

Arg...my mom does this...conversations go like this:

Mumsie: "Don't empty the trash, it's got about a thousand files that I haven't burned to a CD yet!" (Yes, literally, about a thousand...)

Me: "Uh, why do you have them in the trash?"

Mumsie: "So they don't take up my hard drive space!"

Me: *facepalmheaddeskeyefork*

Thankfully I'm only in touching distance of her computer about once a year, sometimes twice. And Oh, praise ye gods she eventually learned that trash still takes up hard drive space....doesn't keep her from using it as her "irreplaceable files" folder.

It really is a good thing that the only other person who uses that computer is my stepfather, who also seems to follow the same nonsensical filing system.

[trayce.livejournal.com]

Me: "Uh, why do you have them in the trash?"

Mumsie: "So they don't take up my hard drive space!"

*lightbulb*

Is THIS why people do this!? It has to be. I cant make sense of it otherwise.

[wignersfriend.livejournal.com]

We had issues with a lot of users trying to reduce their exchange mailbox sizes who thought their deleted items didn't count. So I would say "Ugh, yes."

[chipb0i.livejournal.com]

Add to this the deleted items folder in a mail client. I've had this discussion numerous times with people, yet they come to me in a panic and then get upset when I tell them the email is gone.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

I ran into an executive who was addicted to putting things in his trashcan so his assist could pull them out and file them. Apparently dragging a message to a folder is SOOOO much harder than hitting the Del key.

I'd just love to find the registry key for Delete on Closing and remote edit it into his system.

[ghostdandp.livejournal.com]

You can do this 2 ways. Exchange has a folder management tool that you can set to empty it on a schedule.

The registry key is located at
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Preferences

Change the 12 to whatever version you're running (11 for xp, 10 for 2003, etc)

The actual key is EmptyTrash it's a DWORD key, set it for 1 to have it empty on exit.

[rfairney.livejournal.com]

"But it took me ten minutes to write that line of text, and I put the name and pressed the 'deliver' key and everything!!!111"

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Right up there with thinking that the NK2 (tool tips thing) is their ACTUAL address book...

[bekscilla.livejournal.com]

aaargh, I hate that one!

[chipb0i.livejournal.com]

Yes! I just had this two days ago - had to format a number of computers because we switched to 64bit on those - someone actually called me and told me I didn't put their address book back. I told them they had to enter it manually one by one. After a few seconds of silence (and right before I expected the whining to start), I gave in and told them what it actually was.

[cthulu-for-pm.livejournal.com]

BTDTGTTS.

I once spent two days rebuilding an Exchange 3.5 (I think) server just to restore the mailbox of some PA who did this. Which required restoring the entire Exchange server, as you couldn't restore an individual mailbox back then. It didn't help that the mail server was also the primary domain controller, so it was a case of: build server as BDC, disconnect from LAN, promote to PDC, install Exchange 3, upgrade to 3.5, realise I'd screwed up one of the fifty bazillion steps required, wipe server and start again.

I really hope that restoring Exchange from backup doesn't require that the server look identical to the one it was backed up from; then again, where I work, that's someone else's problem.

After all that, the PA in question still kept her "important but unfiled" emails in the Trash.

I'm so glad they fired me from that job...

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

Came here just to say this. It's DISTURBING how many people immediately delete fucking EVERYTHING from their Inbox - then expect to go back and retrieve it six months later from the god damn Deleted Items.

[falnfenix]

yeahhh...

back when i did Apple support for a local hospital, i had a "problem user" who always needed her OS reinstalled. she'd manage to hose it up pretty well every 4-6 months or so.

each and every time, i'd pull her profile...JUST her profile. after the 4th reinstall she finally realized that i wasn't about to start looking for documents in the trash. bitch tried to get me fired over it, too.

[sidekick2trout.livejournal.com]

Umm... It's called Trash for a reason. And oh look at that most of the "bins" look like trash cans. Huh, wonder why it's called trash...

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Actually, on Windows it's "Recycle Bin" and calling it that (to avoid a lawsuit with Apple who stole the idea from Xerox) has caused us more grief...

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Maybe it should be called "Incinerator" or something similar.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

I actually had a religious freak user who put a fragment of Post-it over her trash can that had "Burn up and be gone forever" written on it. ...or something equally disturbing, once you'd seen the extent of her fervor...

[kyalesyin.livejournal.com]

So, instead of sending things to the trash, she was sending them to hell?

Damn.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

I think she was trying to destroy any residual Evil in the files by burning them in the (virtual) purifying flame...

[rfairney.livejournal.com]

DAMN those evil files!

Oh wait, She did! :D

[rfairney.livejournal.com]

You could add a thousand warnings before deleting and people would still do this.

"Are you sure you wish to delete this file?" Y
"You won't be able to get it back" Y
"This is definitely junk" Y
"You really want to get rid of this, for ever" Y
"No crossed fingers" Y
"You won't complain that your file magically vanished later" Y
"You claim responsibility for the assasination of JFK" Y
"You are a fucking moron" Y
"You swear to all the gods in all the worlds that you will not complain when this file no longer exists" Y

...

"WHERE DID MY FILE GO?!?!?!?!"

[erunamiryene.livejournal.com]

I laughed so hard at this that my boss is about 10% more sure that I'm insane. I think that puts me at about 85% now. XD

[rfairney.livejournal.com]

15% more to go :D

[erunamiryene.livejournal.com]

The best part is, I've only been here for a week and a half and I'm already to 85%. :D

[rfairney.livejournal.com]

Had a day off ? :o

[erunamiryene.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was out at one of the remote sites for a day. :D

I'm the sole tech for offices in Layton, Bountiful, and St George UT, and Grand Junction & Durango CO. And we almost never get to use remote capability to fix *anything*. It's ridiculous.

[rfairney.livejournal.com]

*blink* no remote capability ?


*glad to not be working tech support*

[erunamiryene.livejournal.com]

They were nice enough to let us use it to push the new IAVAs, plus the Adobe updates. After that ... NO REMOTES FOR YOU! Cause, like, we'd use it to exploit the network or something. *eyeroll*

In fairness, it's contracting to the government, so I don't expect sanity or logic.

[rfairney.livejournal.com]

OUCH, I use remote access at home just to make changes to my file server, I dread working in a tech environment where i'd need to walk to another room to make changes, let alone jump in a car >.<

(That said i'd probably just take my laptop and sit in the server room to avoid walking :p, Walking is for coffee and pizza, or chinese, indian, or whichever other takeaway place will deliver at 3am)

[rfairney.livejournal.com]

Also, I'm fairly sure THIS sort of user needs to have "bypass recycle bin" turned on, or whatever the equivilant setting for your system is. If they can't learn like that, they should go back to paper, where you CAN'T undelete if you leave all your work in the trash can overnight >:)

[sgt-easton.livejournal.com]

That reminds me, I think I left a $20 bill and my car keys at the bottom of my garbage can.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

This is why all corporate PCs should wipe their Trash folders and various Temp directories on both logout and login, why stuff older than about four to six weeks in email Inboxes should be automatically deleted (after being invisibly backed up because there will always be some nutball who complains), why anything not part of the SOE should be wiped on a PC within 24 hours (use the network for storage, that's what it's for), and why corporate policy should be utterly unimpressed with staff who don't remember these rules.

Basically, if things which might be wiped out later are not wiped out ASAP, people will assume that because it survived 24 hours in Trash/Temp/C:, it will survive forever.

Kill early, kill often. At least then when a user's work is wiped out because they didn't listen, it will only be a day's worth at most, and they'll get the lesson sooner rather than later.

[trayce.livejournal.com]

Hear hear!

[rfairney.livejournal.com]

And make them write lines about responsible filing before recovering!

[ptstech.livejournal.com]

TESTIFY!!

[zendequervain.livejournal.com]

The stuff in our main inboxes gets deleted after 90 days automatically.

We're actually required to keep one year+ worth of emails at my work, so I've got all mine archived. :D

Now, if only I could convince my coworker NOT to store stuff in her deleted items folder. Of course, now that they switched us to a voicemail system that required that your inbox is never full (since it emails you the messages), maybe she'll learn.

[scarah2.livejournal.com]

Do you work where I work? We recently uncovered a "process" where multiple departments are moving stuff to the Outlook Deleted Items of multiple mailboxes to "save" them so someone else can pull them up and work on them, as they are still active.

Their response? "It's been working fine for two years!"